“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

The inability to clearly communicate is one of the single most problematic issues in life.

Poor communication can ruin relationships, thwart business endeavors, and even start wars. Imagine how much of an impact effective communication can your own life, whether it be in your relationships or at your job.

If you want to communicate better, and subsequently improve your personal and business relationships, you first need to understand how to communicate clearly. Click Here to Read Article …

If you are anything like me, researching a topic can take much more time than actually writing about it. If you don’t have some kind of system when you are doing your research, you can spend entirely too much time sifting through articles and data, which can really take a bite out your overall productivity.

There are more tools available to you to accomplish this kind of efficiency than you could ever make the time to look through and evaluate, so it’s a good thing I’m here to help you move in the right direction, and it’s also a good thing I’m not charging you by the hour to do it – I could really rack up a padded time sheet if I went back and added it up.

Instead, I’m going to give you my top 5 tools for online researching for the low, low price of free. My only requirement is that if you are still using Internet Explorer as your browser, you have to download Chrome or Firefox – right now, go ahead, I’m waiting. Got it? Okay, now delete IE from your computer and swear that you will never again do anything so ridiculous. Then move forward with the article, knowing that most of these tools are Chrome extensions or at least have Chrome extensions in addition to the full apps. Click Here to Read Article …

Your email inbox is one of the most necessary yet frustrating parts of your work life. It’s okay to admit it, you’re not alone in this boat.

Regardless of whether you are an employee, a business owner, or a solopreneur, email remains the primary method of interaction in modern business. Add to that your personal emails, forums, newsletters, and the occasional spam mail that makes it through your Gmail filters, and managing your inbox becomes a time-sucking endeavor.

Numerous books, methods, and software programs have been dedicated to solving this problem, and none are perfect, but SaneBox may be the closest thing to the perfect solution that there is. Click Here to Read Article …

Some people have a negative perception of part time jobs. Low pay, no benefits, and lack of a prestigious title are connotations that leap to mind for many.

Life is a matter of perception, however, and being locked blindly into any perception can hinder your possible opportunities. What if you were to change your idea of the purpose of part time jobs? Perhaps they could be a valuable tool in reaching your goals and dreams.

With the recent clamor over McDonald’s employees petitioning and striking for double their current wages, it seems that more people are viewing fast-food jobs and other similar part time jobs as a permanent and viable position for the long haul. This might seem a ridiculous option to the ambitious class, but in the short term part time jobs could provide the time and flexibility to pursue other avenues with less stress.Click Here to Read Article …

Task management and increased productivity: if it were simple there wouldn’t be a gazillion books, apps, and seminars addressing the issue. Often the pursuit of better task management can seem like chasing a unicorn. Through a dense forest. At night. Blindfolded. You get the idea.

We live in a busy world, and although our digital existence continually promises to optimize our time, there are so many things we use to help ourselves that the tools of freedom sometimes become the shackles that enslave us. Yet there are indeed ways to actually increase your productivity. Case in point, the review you are reading right now. This review is not the solution, the application I’m reviewing is, and it’s called VisioTask.Click Here to Read Article …

Managing your hourly time with a time tracker as a freelancer is one of the most important things you can do. With the freedom of setting your own hours comes the responsibility of keeping up with things without oversight.

If you manage a team of employees or contractors, this task becomes even more of a challenge. When it comes to billing your clients however, they aren’t concerned about your problems, they just want an accurate invoice. As a freelancer you are probably on the move a bit. If you manage other contractors remotely, this issue becomes accentuated. Without having a punch-clock on the wall that employees can physically walk past and clock in and out with, how can you keep track of everyone’s time?Click Here to Read Article …

Accidents will happen, at least that what Elvis Costello sang. It’s true, though: no matter how careful you are or how well you prepare, there will always be some percentage of slips, falls, and other different types of accidents at work that reduce workplace safety.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t minimize these accidents by taking some precautions, however. Not only can you, but you absolutely should. Want some numbers to reinforce that? Check these out, from the website of the American Society of Safety Engineers.

The total direct payments to workers for the worst injuries and illnesses in 2006 was $48.6 billion

Lost productivity from these accidents and illnesses costs companies $60 billion each year

I’ll stop there. That’s billions with a “B”, boys and girls, and you don’t want your company to have any sizable slice of those payments or losses. So what can you do? Some fairly simple things, actually.Click Here to Read Article …

Whether you are the HR person for a company or you actually run a recruiting service which helps HR departments find good candidates for their positions, keeping track of the plethora of applicants can be a daunting task.

This becomes even more of an issue when the job market is soft, as it has been for the last few years. With the new standard for applying for a position being the submission of a resume or CV online, that stack of applicants can really become overwhelming fast. To counter this problem and make the process move smoother, many companies and headhunters have taken in recent years to using recruitment software.

The latest unemployment numbers in the US show that our job situation isn’t getting anywhere fast. For the job seeker, that means that the competition you are up against will continue to be stacked high for the foreseeable future.

With the countless resumes that employers are sifting through whenever they have an open position, it is more important now than it ever has been to do what you can to make an impression quickly.

What’s on your resume is important, and so is what’s not on it. When time is of the essence to the employer, it might take something eye-catching to get them to even read yours. This is the advantage that Resume Baker can give you. Click Here to Read Article …

These days, with the economy still barely holding on by the thinnest of threads, resumes are flying around more than the ungodly mosquitoes that seem to have woken up for the summer.

With so many people trying to find meaningful employment, it doesn’t take much to drop to the bottom of the stack.

Take it from someone who once had to go through a ton of resumes on a regular basis: you’re putting too much on yours. If you aren’t, you’re one of the few.

Allow me to share some insight to help you in your pursuit of a job. Ever heard of File 13? That’s likely where your resume will end up if you have these 5 things on it when you submit it to that potential employer. Here are 5 things to leave off your resume: Click Here to Read Article …

There are many aspects to being a writer, depending on what exactly you are doing. A common thread of events that happens with many writers looks like this: come up with an idea, write a book about it, get speaking engagements from the book, create another product based on the book.

Even though this is the common perception of the order of things, and the way many people go about it, it’s really the long way around the track to becoming a successful (and profitable) writer. Let’s look at this from a different perspective and you’ll see how you can start earning an income on your idea before you ever write about it. Click Here to Read Article …